Tag: infertility

Fertility treatment in the UK is more successful and safer than ever before, according to a report from the HFEA (Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority).

IVF is now 85 percent more likely to succeed than when records first began in 1991, said the regulator. Over 20,000 babies were born in 2016 as a result of more than 68,000 IVF treatments, an increase of four percent from 2015. The HFEA’s new report covers fertility treatment trends and success rates for the 2014-2016 period.

Priceless: Kristy and Craig Darken with baby Henry, born via a surrogate. Kristy described the process as akin to having all of the ingredients to make a cake, but baking it in someone else’s oven. Picture: Kelsey Mlekus Photography

BY the time Kristy and Craig Darken found out they were going to be parents, they had almost given up all hope of holding a child of their own in their arms.

It had been close to eight years of highs and lows, of hope and of devastation, as the Elermore Vale couple trod the testing track of having a baby via a surrogate.

But then, countless counselling sessions, IVF, two surrogates and 10 embryos later, a tearful late night phone call came from Kristy’s sister, Rebecca.

“She was crying her eyes out,” Kristy said.

“I thought she was crying because she knew it was our last try. I thought she was devastated. Then finally, she said, ‘I’m pregnant. It worked’.

There are several reasons to consider using a surrogate to bear your child. Male same-sex couples who want to have a biological child often use a surrogate. Some women are unable to carry and bear a child due to cancer treatment, genetic conditions, having had a hysterectomy, or medical conditions that make it dangerous for them to get pregnant. Sometimes couples use a surrogate when other fertility treatments have not been successful for them or there are problems with the female partner’s uterus. You may have heard of celebrity couples who have used surrogates, such as Jimmy Fallon and his wife Nancy Juvonen, and Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick. Here are some facts you need to know before you start on your journey to a family with a surrogate.

Infertility sucks. If you haven’t lived through it, or experienced it vicariously through a friend, it’s hard to explain why it is soul-crushingly awful.

Before I was thrust into the dark underworld of nightly hormone injections, invasive vaginal ultrasounds and regular blood tests revealing to me just how crappy my eggs are, I was able to brush it off like most people.

“Why is she so upset about her miscarriage? She can just try again. It’s not as if a real baby was in there.” And, “Why would they spend that much money on in vitro fertilization when they can just adopt?”

American actress Lena Dunham’s poignant article in the March issue of the US Vogue about her decision to have her womb surgically removed at 31 when many young women begin considering having a baby is not just about her ending her decade-long battle against endometriosis.

It’s about choice and taking control of her body, even if it means ending the option of carrying a child.

The night before the surgery, when the nurse asked her one last time: “Is there any chance you could be pregnant?” The star of the TV series, Girls, said: “‘Well, not after tomorrow,’ I say. I wish there were a word for when nobody likes your jokes but you make them anyway.”

As more and more women are deciding to have children later, the method of freezing one’s eggs is the preferred method. But is it safe?

In recent times, more and more women are choosing to have children at a later age. Often this is a result of having decided to focus on career first, or from not finding the right partner. In fact, women today are having their first baby at an average age of 28.4 years, which is an all-time high, and as a result, there’s a growing demand for social egg freezing. Read more

Toni Street and her best mate Sophie Braggins. Braggins is acting as Street’s surrogate and carrying her third child, due in August.

Broadcaster Toni Street and her husband are expecting their third child – this time via a surrogate mother.

Street has opened up on the happy family news for her and husband Matt France and also spoken of the serious health battle that has required them to use a surrogate – Street’s best friend Sophie Braggins – to add to their current family of two young daughters.

Street – a co-host of the The Hits’ popular morning radio show – and France will welcome a baby boy into their family in August.

They have gone public as a rising number of Kiwi families face a range of fertility issues, with some looking at the option of investigating surrogacy.

The Iowa Supreme Court rules that contracts made with surrogate mothers are legal in the state.

The case involves a couple from Cedar Rapids who were nearing 50 years old when they married in 2013 and decided they wanted to have a child. They placed an online ad in 2015 and signed an agreement to have the Muscatine woman serve as the surrogate mother. Both embryos implanted in the surrogate mother took hold — but the twins were born prematurely and one died.

The surrogate mother then refused to give up the surviving baby, saying the surrogate contract was not legal in Iowa. The district court, after genetic testing, ruled the contract is enforceable, terminated the parental rights of the surrogate mother and her husband, and awarded the Cedar Rapids man permanent legal and physical custody.

Following the Feb. 6 legislative cutoff deadline for committee action on bills in their originating house, both chambers took up debate and voted on dozens of bills in floor sessions that lasted well into the night.

Lawmakers have until Wednesday, Feb. 14, to pass bills and move them to the opposite house for further consideration. Measures that don’t make it past this deadline, except budget-related bills, will likely be dead for this session.

Every couple hopes to hear their child giggling in the house, but sometimes their dream seems to slowly fade to a point that it starts to feel far-fetched. Science is offering many Assisted Reproductive Techniques but seldom medical issues with the couple obstruct the way, even after options like IVF, IUI, and ICSI etc. When these techniques fail, a couple has two final options left: Adoption and Surrogacy.

A gay man suffering severe pain from cancer was mortified to discover he was only able to donate sperm to a female partner.

Logan Morton, 22, received the shock diagnosis he had acute myeloid leukemia in April last year, and after being warned the treatment could make him infertile, arranged to store healthy sperm through Fertility Associates.

Severely debilitated from the cancer, Morton asked a nurse to fill out the paperwork, and noticed afterwards that he was only given the option of donating his sperm to a female partner.

A roughly 10% spike in employer-offered fertility benefits is expected in the next two years as more companies evaluate and prioritize family-friendly benefits in an effort to attract and retain top talent.

New research out by Willis Towers Watson reveals the percentage of employers offering fertility benefits to employees is expected to grow from 55% in 2017 to 66% by 2019. And, of employers already offering financial assistance, 81% said the benefits would apply to same-sex couples next year, compared with 65% in 2017.

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) l-r Senator Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan listens as Sarah Tuttle gives reasons not to repeal SB126 regarding surrogacy Wednesday, February 7, 2018 in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee at the Capitol. “I would’ve given anything to have been able to carry my own children,” said Tuttle who now has two daughters thanks to a surrogate, Kara Ford, who is now her best friend.

Amanda Naor has spent her life around children. Early in her career she worked as an infant caregiver. She met her husband, Spenser, while leading a production of “Peter Pan” at a children’s theater in Los Angeles. They took turns playing Smee.

But when it came time to have a child of their own, Naor was unable to conceive naturally. After two rounds of fertility treatment covered by their insurance, they were told they would need in-vitro fertilization to implant a viable embryo into Naor’s uterus. After liquidating their savings and securing an interest-free loan, the couple realized they would still be many thousands of dollars short of the considerable cost of treatment. So they made a GoFundMe page.

Tabatha Ballein, of Williston, gave birth to the daughter of Shannon Mouser and Seth Paskin, of Austin, Texas on Thursday at 6:45 a.m. Sky Eloise Paskin, was born at 6 pounds, 1 ounce and 19 inches long.

Shannon Mouser and Seth Paskin, of Austin, Texas, have desperately been trying to have a child of their own.

The couple married in 2014 and immediately tried various methods to get pregnant, including vitro fertilization, which involves combining sperm and an egg outside of the body, and artificial insemination. For years, they had no luck.

“That’s my son,” Richardson remembers thinking. “I just caught my son.” Her sister, Andrea Friesen, laid her head back on the hospital bed and sobbed with relief. “Every single nurse, doctor, everybody in there had tears in their eyes,” the sisters’ father, Don Larson, said. “And it was just that final relief of, oh my goodness, it’s finally over, and it was successful.”

Imagine having 22 biological children – it’s okay if you just ran away screaming, I did a little bit. Now imagine that you don’t have to actually take care of any of them – yeah, that’s better. Egg donors aren’t technically parents, meaning they don’t carry, birth, or raise the kids they help create. But their contributions make so many dreams come true.

For some people having a big family is a dream, but some simply can’t have children. That is where the Van Der Worp sisters come in. They are some pretty incredible egg donors. Between the two sisters, they have 22 biological kids. Samara has her own son, but other than that, she has 9 other children that are only hers through DNA. Her sister Sarah has 12 – with one more on the way. The two have given the ultimate gift to families who are struggling with infertility.

This year marks the 40th birthday of the first ever IVF baby Louise Brown. IVF has changed significantly since 1978.

In the early days of IVF, women had to be admitted to clinics for a long period of time for treatment while treatments such as egg donation, egg sharing, sperm sharing, specific fertility drugs, dedicated lab equipment, catheters, ICSI needles and many things taken for granted in modern day IVF treatments, were all unheard of in 1978.